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[harlequinbooks]

Editor's picks

I asked Editorial Assistant Kate Studer about some of her top books for November. Here are her picks!

BRING ME HOME FOR CHRISTMAS by Robyn Carr, MIRA, November 2011

Welcome back to Virgin River, the perfect place to spend the holidays—and mend a broken heart. There’s something so reminiscent and wonderful about the way Robyn mixes old characters with new to create a close-knit community that might as well be the town you grew up in. That’s what you get in Bring Me Home for Christmas, a story that captures that feeling we’re all looking for around holiday season—a feeling of belonging, of going home. This heart-warming tale of love lost and found again will definitely put you in the holiday mood and the romance is more than steamy enough to keep you toasty all winter long!

IN CLOSE by Brenda Novak, MIRA, November 2011

Whenever I dive into a mystery novel, I always find myself trying to piece together the clues and predict what the big twist will be. My standard for a good romantic suspense novel is one that manages to keep me guessing until the very end—and that’s exactly what readers will find in Brenda Novak’s heart-pounding In Close. Novak’s flair for writing action-packed mystery mixed with sizzling hot romance absolutely shines in this third installment in her Bulletproof Trilogy (preceded by June’s Inside and August’s In Seconds) and if you’re anything like me, it will keep you compulsively turning the pages until that final, completely unexpected reveal.

[harlequinbooks]

On the art of writing trilogies 

by Brenda Novak

I’m not a plotter, not one of those writers who work out every detail in advance. I don’t know what’s going to happen until the characters tell me, and they often say nothing until I’m in the middle of their particular story. So what  if I have something happen in Book 1 that I can’t live with in Book 2 or 3?

I try to accomplish this is by creating a conflict big enough to carry the number of books I’ll be writing. The conflict is what makes a book interesting. It’s what gives it that…feeling of OMG, what’s going to happen next?

Usually a trilogy or series will be either tightly connected or loosely connected. My six-book Last Stand series, for instance, is loosely connected—many of the same characters weave through the stories, but the connecting element is the victims’ charity for which they work. Each story focuses on a new case to be solved. My Stillwater Trilogy, on the other hand, is very tightly connected. It focuses on one deep, dark secret and how that secret affects several members of the same family.

As a reader, do you prefer tightly connected books? Or do you like books that focus on a new problem with each addition to the series?

For more details on Brenda’s newest trilogy, check out the Harlequin Blog.